


The Vidal Vicissitudes

by cicak



Category: Hitman (Video Games)
Genre: Diana Burnwood's Sex Club, F/M, I'm not going to cheap out on you, London, Mission Story, POV Outsider, Sex Farce, canon typical coincidences, canon typical face blindness, do not fear the E rating is 47 and Diana boning, providence being shady in unspecified ways, that's the cicak promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 19:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30043767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: “Do you know why so many people have barcode tattoos?” she remarks to Kazenov. “That's the second man I’ve seen with one since we got here.”Tamara Vidal and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Couple Of Days.
Relationships: Agent 47/Diana Burnwood, Tamara Vidal/OMC
Comments: 10
Kudos: 29





	The Vidal Vicissitudes

Everyone, it seems, hates London. Even Londoners, even people who couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, they still could easily list a thousand things that they hate about the city. 

Tamara always felt that she hated London in a different way to most people. She liked the dreary weather, for one. Compared to home, she liked the perennial autumn the city always seemed to be caught in, all rainy and grey save the two days in July when summer happened. She liked the business-mindedness and the creative corruption, she likes the uncaring unfriendliness of the people and the unremarkable nature of this unremarkable city squatting on an ugly brown river that nevertheless had been the centre of the world for thousands of years. There's a pleasing practicality to it.

The reason she hates London is that going there usually means she has a long, nasty piece of work to take care of, so it's not so much the city, but the people who hold power in it that are the problem. She turns up and hits the town to apply the thumbscrews to the corrupt and powerful who have fallen into Providence’s orbit, and then leaves again immediately. Edwards calls it maintenance, in his dull, dreary voice, but he never does it himself. Perhaps it's not that she hates London. Normal, everyday London is fine. It's the underworld that makes her want to scream.

There's a rumour that the ICA is sniffing around Providence, and so even though she’s been in meetings all day, shuttling back between the City and Westminster and Canary Wharf, her day planned by someone who did not appreciate the difficulty of getting around the city at rush hour in high heels, its all hands on deck, and so she forced herself to go back to her hotel room and get dressed for her evening engagement. She is annoyed that she thought it was a good idea to bring one pair of shoes for three days, however much they match all her outfits, because after one day her tired and aching feet just need a break. 

Tonight she is at the Nauryz party at the Kazakh embassy. Fittingly, for a spring equinox new year, outside of the stuffy ballroom, London is bursting into spring like a teenager forced to leave its room to meet an elderly relative it doesn’t like. Providence loves a central Asian republic, it does much of its best work in the former soviet states, and so there is a small gaggle of junior Heralds here on proceedings, led by her deputy, Chingis Kazenov, and so she’s really only here to be Edwards’ eyes and ears, and despite her feet and her shapewear and the jetlag, she’s enjoying herself. The champagne is remarkably good for a muslim country, and there’s this one canape, a kind of delicious sausage, cubes of which have proven all too easy to pop in her mouth between gaps in the conversation.

She’s casting around when she sees a woman watching her over the shoulder of the deputy Ambassador. The woman is striking, even if you don’t swing that way, the kind of woman who can’t help but catch the eye. A statuesque redhead in that aristocratic way, dressed in a green gown with a wide, sensual neckline, her eyes follow Tamara as she casts around for more canapes that makes Tamara narrow her eyes with suspicion. There’s something about her manner and the way she’s holding herself that makes the girly elements of the dress look architectural, arabesque, rather than frivolous. 

Tamara means to go and mention it to Kazenov, but at that moment she spies another waiter, newly emerged from the kitchens, but when she flags him down he has no more of the sausage left, and she sighs deeply at the exact same time as a pretty young woman standing nearby, who smiles and hands her one of the two pieces she was hoarding behind her back.

They munch together in blissful silence for a moment, and Tamara smacks her lips with appreciation.

“Good, right?” the pretty young woman says. She has the youth and perpetual stress markings of a student, and she turns out to be a biochemistry PhD in her final year, with two dogs and a finance-bro husband and parents in law who want grandchildren.

“I don’t know about you, but I only really come to these events for the food,” Tamara lies, and her new friend nods enthusiastically and says, “Oh my god they're so good aren't they?? The embassy does the best kazi, even better than my mother’s, I swear I never understood why the English don't eat horsemeat. I basically only come to the embassy events to get a taste of home.” She looks around for another waiter, conveniently missing Tamara’s look of horror as she swallows quickly before she allows her brain to process what she’s just heard. She’s spared any more culinary delights when her new friend’s husband turns up and whisks her away and Tamara drinks the rest of her champagne, and focuses on the cleansing sourness, emphasised by the warmth from her hand.

Another waiter appears at Tamara's elbow a few moments later with a tray entirely beladen with horsemeat sausage. She barely registers him at first, but he’s insistent, and he demands a second look. He’s a tall man in a badly fitting uniform, older than the rest of the staff by decades and while his look is unplaceable, he's got slavic angles that are definitely not ethnic Kazakh. Though, as her new friend had explained, the internal politics and old fashioned barbarism of the Soviet Union meant a lot of internal migration was insisted upon in case the provinces got ideas. The waiter has an ugly tattoo on the back of his head of a barcode, some anti-capitalist bullshit from his skinhead days, no doubt, cruelly exposed to the world thanks to male pattern balding. No wonder he has such a shit job, she thinks, bitterly.

The waiter practically wafts the full plate of the canapes under her nose, his English flat and accent unplaceable, but Tamara doesn't really notice, instead feeling vaguely sick at the implications of the delicious smell. She was always a horse girl growing up, spending hours on horseback riding through luscious fields and winning medals at gymkhana. 

It's one of the other things she likes about London, no one tries to make you eat weird gross local delicacies made out of your childhood pets. She shuffles away from the waiter and goes to make sure Kazenov is doing what he's told, tells him to keep an eye on the woman in the green dress, and after she’s done with another round of the party, she gives in and goes to get a shot of vodka to clear the lingering delicious aftertaste out of her mouth. The skinhead waiter is behind the bar now, and she glares at him, but feels defanged when he pours her an extra large measure of the good stuff, and then leaves her alone.

Still, the thought of horsemeat lingers, and even the vodka can’t make her feel back to normal. If anything, it makes her feel worse, and she has to bolt to not throw up on the plush carpet. The embassy’s toilets are thankfully quite a nice place to be extravagantly sick in. She has her head in the thankfully clean bowl for what feels like an hour, and people come in and check on her several times, including a posh English woman who knocks on the cubicle door and even opens it, who gets the full force of Tamara’s invictives.

When she finally feels human again, she is guided out the back by concerned embassy staff, escorted by Kazenov, and she makes him take her to McDonalds for a replacement dinner. The chill is too much for her spring coat, and they linger over chips as Kazenov gives his debrief, and it's only when they stumble back into the hotel with stomachs full of grease does Tamara realise her planner has been lifted from her handbag, along with her wallet. 

* * *

The second night Tamara is once again drinking in uncomfortable shoes, truly the pastime of the rich and infamous. Her one consolation was that at least she didn’t have to wear a gown this time, and so she’s stayed in her trusty wrap dress all day. Her feet are throbbing, but this is at least a sit-down dinner. They're at a rare meeting of the European heralds, and because Edwards is here she is obligated to be his eyes and ears, because people love nothing more than to talk shit where it’s most dangerous. Edwards is holding court at the head of the long table, and she and Kazenov are down the other end. They’re in some pretentious city of London establishment, the worshipful company of money launderers or something along those lines, but the food is good and the talk is at least not obviously seditious, so she can enjoy it. The large windows are a bit superfluous, looking out onto the narrow streets, grey and cold looking after yesterday’s joys of spring.

Dinner drags on, but business gets done. Edwards gives a speech about loyalty and continuity and drops the inevitable hints that he’s thinking of retiring, same as he does every year to keep people in his good graces. Eventually, they are allowed to get up and stretch their legs before the dessert is served. “Come with me for a smoke”, Tamara says to Kazenov, who nods and follows her outside. 

There’s a small crowd clustered under an awning, and Tamara bullies Kazenov into giving her one of his Marlboro Lights and lighting it for her, purely because she can. It's raining lightly, and everyone is complaining about it, saying the same dull things people always say. Tamara scowls at the passing traffic, and ignores them pointedly.

A smartly dressed man with glasses and a large briefcase walks by, and Tamara rolls her eyes at yet another ugly barcode tattoo. 

“Do you know why so many people have barcode tattoos?” she remarks to Kazenov. “That's the second man I’ve seen with one since we got here.”

Kazenov swallows and looks thoughtful. “Yeah, maybe? There was a tv series in the early 2000s, sexy cyberpunk chicks, military experiments gone rogue, gone sexual, you know? Probably was big here. Brits love that scifi shit.”

“Hmph,” Tamara scoffed, grinding her cigarette out on the gold ‘no smoking’ plaque affixed on the wall, pettily enjoying the glare of the nearby security guard. “Nerds. I should have guessed.”

Back inside they retake their seats, and dessert is served. Tamara immediately realises she made the wrong choice when she sees Kazenov’s chocolate pudding, but he refuses to switch with her, and makes a point of obnoxiously moaning after every bite, and offering a spoonful to the woman seated to his right he has been boring all night with details of the book he read on ethical non monogamy, his usual trollish response to anyone who declares they have a boyfriend. Tamara doesn't really understand the point of cheating if you're not going to get the thrill of being caught out of it? People really are so toothless these days.

From the other end of the table, Edwards catches her eye and nods with a quirk of his eyebrows. Tamara sighs, and stops pushing her stupid blackberry cheesecake around her plate, and folds her napkin onto it. She’s still not feeling right after the horsemeat.

“I think it's finally coming to an end,” Tamara says quietly to Kazenov, “But I think Edwards is going to want us to stay out and keep our ears open. I hope we don’t go to some pretentious “authentic and unique” pub the English are so mad about. I just want a fucking drink, not a fucking cultural experience.”

“I know somewhere we could go.” Kazenov says.

“I'm not going to that fucking club,” Tamara snaps. “You try and get me to go every time, but I won't. No one in this country knows how to dance. The English were born with two left feet.”

“You liked it when we went salsa dancing in Paris”, he pouts.

Tamara scoffs. “You were far too drunk to have any memory of that night. Anyway, I mostly danced with you, and while you're a god awful dancer, you at least don’t step on my feet.”

“Fine, what about a club without dancing. A members club.”

“A strip club?” Tamara asks, skeptically, but Kazenov isn’t listening. He smacks himself on the forehead in mock chastisement.

“I can't _believe_ I never thought of taking you there before! We’ll have to pick up a better dress, for you, but that's fine, we can do that.” He looks her up and down and says “Perhaps something in red?” before he starts typing a mile a minute on his phone, and is only stopped when Tamara snatches it out of his hands and holds it above her head.

“You forfeited your right to decide our evening when you insulted my clothes”, she said, and put his phone in her handbag.

“Fine, but you’re missing out. You should learn to live a little. Have some fun.”

Tamara gets a top up of her wine. “I remain to be convinced that any club could be that good.”

“It's a special club, Tamara.” Kazenov says, waggling his spectacularly bushy eyebrows, which always gets Tamara to laugh, incredulously.

“What, a sex club? Here?”

He shrugs. “You know the English. Love to fuck best when there's rules about it. You should give it a go. Been a while, right?”

“Kazenov, you're insane. If I want to fuck, I'll fuck, okay?”

Opposite her, the elderly Herald, Paul Cavanaugh, a Lord of the realm and black market weapons dealer, she remembers idly, who has been scowling all night at her bad language, glares daggers at her. He opens his mouth to say something, and for a second, Tamara sees a red dot against the yellow of his teeth and instinctively ducks as his head explodes, the high calibre bullet shattering the mirror behind him in a shower of glass and blood. The place goes silent for a second, and then it's pandemonium. Those big windows were a fucking liability, and Tamara is furious that security hadn’t spotted the possibility of their being a sniper on the roof opposite. The elderly Herald sits slumped in his chair with a neat hole between his eyebrows, still drawn close in disgust at a woman swearing. Security swarms the hall, _finally_ , and they make a beeline for their end of the table, and Tamara gladly goes with them, wishing dearly she had not worn shoes with ankle straps so she could take them off as she is swept down the hall at top speed and bundled into a waiting car.

They're all returned to their hotels and told that they're locked down until further notice. Tamara is debriefed by the head of security, who tells her that it was an ICA hit on Cavanaugh, ordered by a coterie of people he’d pissed off over the years, and as far as they can tell there is no ongoing threat, though the assassin had got away by the time they found the sniper's nest, the gun was still there, so they were sure they would catch him once the gun had been analysed. They’re free to go out, but she’s advised to keep a low profile.

She’s then further debriefed by Edwards, who pats her on the shoulder condescendingly and tells her to relax, he’s on it, and then she’s alone. She pulls the curtains closed and takes a few deep breaths. There’s no way a sniper can get to her, the window in her room opens onto a brick wall a few meters away. She was annoyed when she checked in that they hadn’t given her a room with a view, but now she’s pathetically grateful for the state of mind. She checks her bag to check the time, and realises she has Kazenov’s phone in there alongside her own. It's only 9pm, and so she opens the door and tells the lurking security guard to take the phone to room 212, and then quickly slams it shut and locks it behind her. A few minutes later her phone beeps, and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Thanks for sending back my phone”, Kazenov has sent with a little smiley face. 

“No problem”, Tamara replies, and then puts her phone on silent and goes to take a bath.

At midnight, unable to sleep, wired out of her skin and desperate to make a bad decision, Tamara gets out of bed. She puts on the wine red cocktail dress she was planning to wear the next evening, applies all the makeup in her bag and does her best to dry her half-slept-on wet hair into something resembling a style. Wincing, puts her heels back on. She puts her phone, credit card and switchblade in her clutch for safekeeping, and slips out, quietly. She nods to the security guard standing opposite, and heads for the elevators.

Kazenov answers his door quickly. He looks exhausted and sober, which is unlike him.

Tamara walks to his minibar and gets out a fistful of mini bottles of spirit essentially at random and cracks each of them open in turn. "Get dressed, and then take me to that club,” she commands, and throws back a shot of what turns out to be gin. She coughs. “Fuck London. Fuck all of it."

* * *

An hour later they’re buzzed and tumbling out of a black cab. The club is down a steep flight of stairs below an ordinary black door on Dean Street in Soho. Kazenov knocks on the door and speaks quietly with the man behind it, and then the two of them are swept downstairs.

They're greeted by a handsome elderly man dressed as a butler, but with a mid-Atlantic accent that sounds fake as hell, who signs them both in and then shoos Kazenov away with a fond, avuncular chastisement. "Go, Chingis, you know the way, try not to get into trouble."

Turning back to her, he bows, like something out of a movie. “Madam Vidal”, this mad American butler says, “it is a pleasure to have you. For your first time we normally have one of the other women show you around, but it's late, and everyone is now indisposed. Normally, we’d arrange for you to come back another day, but your colleague explained the circumstances, and so I will be the one giving you a tour. He guides her down the narrow stairs, and the room opens out into a lush bar, decorated like a parallel version of the 1930s. Handsome men sit around chatting and smoking with each other, drinking martinis in well cut suits. They’re the full gamut of male beauty, from twinks to silver foxes, and there isn’t a phone or a television screen in sight. 

“This is not your normal erotic parlour,” the butler says quietly. “You can go and make pleasant conversation with men in the bar if you wish, but with everything that's happened tonight, I think perhaps you might just want to take your weight off your lovely shoes and have someone look after you.”

“That would be lovely, thank you Mr....”

“John will do,” he twinkles, “Though some of the ladies call me Jeeves, as a joke, and well, I aspire to that level of perfection. Please follow me into the salon.”

John leads her into a small, smoky parlour by way of the sights, the bars, the bathrooms, the smoking terrace (“although you can smoke inside if you like”), and then asks a few probing, succinct questions about exactly what kind of man she likes, her most treasured sexual memory, and whether she has any specific scenarios she would like him to try and facilitate. He listens closely, asks a few more searching questions, and then returns a few minutes later with a very large vodka martini, long lemon twist snaking in the stylish glass. It is perfect, cold, sharp and clean, with slightly sweet vermouth. She immediately wants three more of them, and says so.

“I’ll keep them coming”, John says, and leaves her with a parting bow. “Please enjoy yourself, Madame Vidal, and I'll send someone to see to you. I think I know the perfect man for the job.”

The room is red velvet and burnished leather, the furniture lacquered and gilded at the edges, and with her wine red dress she feels part of the furniture, an object. Disassociation, she realises, and digs her nails into her palm to bring herself back to reality.

She sits in an obscenely comfortable green leather armchair, and takes another long sip of her drink. The walls are lined with portraits of beautiful women, gazing confidently into the middle distance. The room is large, and the way it's set up, with lacquered screens separating sets of chairs and tables and notably, one pool table, makes it obvious that voyeurism is part of the appeal. She feels nervous, like this has all got too quickly out of control, but she can’t really see much. There are no mirrors anywhere, and while there’s a couple in the next section, she can hear them murmur but not any of their words, just the sound of kissing, and some heavy breathing. 

Tamara jumps when the door opens, but it's John again, accompanied by a man so beautiful he takes her breath away. He's very tall, well over two meters, which she likes, with dirty blonde hair, bright green eyes and a wide smile. He looks to be in his early 30s, and he's got broad, sloping shoulders and a rowers physique tapering down to a small waist, and the suit he’s wearing is perfectly cut to show off his sculpted thighs. Against her better judgement, her mouth waters.

“I'm Sam”, he says, and he has a sweet Irish lilt to his voice too. “You're Tamara?”

He puts down another perfect martini on the table next to her, and sits on the stool.

“Oh, you'll do nicely.” Tamara says, and takes a big gulp, showing her teeth.

Sam starts by undoing the straps on her shoes, and putting them delicately at the side of his chair. He takes her foot in his hands, and the first touch of his thumbs against her sore and tender arches is better than sex, Tamara practically orgasms just from the wave relief that courses through her.

Maybe her groan has spurred on the couple the other side of the screen, because now Tamara can hear the woman loud and clear. The woman is loud and chatty, encouraging her partner to keep going, and they seem to be getting into it. Tamara hears her neighbour gasp and swear loudly. “Fuck! Oh! That's new, where _did_ you learn that? Keep going, please!”

Sam starts on her other foot and Tamara throws her head back, which puts her in line with the gap in the screen. She cranes her neck and is surprised to recognise the indiscreet redhead as the woman in the green dress from the Nauryz party. She is perched on the edge of a long green snooker table, leaning back on her elbows with her head thrown back in erotic ecstasy, panting and keening. Tonight she is wearing what appears to be a navy Herve Leger Bandage dress that would show off her figure were it to still be mostly on her body. The dress is rucked up her thighs and the straps are hanging down her arms, her breasts spilled entirely out of the front, and despite her age her breasts are still pointing to god, the absolute cow, and from the looks of it her companion has only just finished mauling them, from the delicious red marks standing out against her pale skin. At this angle Tamara can't see much of her partner, the screen and the table hiding him away, but it's obviously what he is doing. The redhead wraps her long legs around his shoulders and grinds her cunt against his face, chokes out a number, perhaps some kind of kinky tally? If so, the man evidently has stamina, to be going for so long.

The beautiful redhead arches and comes with a bitten back yell for what feels like a long time, until she giggles and playfully pushes her companion away, standing to strip off her tight dress with his help, and leans back entirely nude, facing Tamara this time, showing off how wet and swollen, how gloriously nude she is, save for a pair of shiny patent leather heels. She’s smiling seductively up at her partner and looks the queen of the universe at that moment as the man steps round to get in position to fuck her. Tamara is momentarily distracted by the size of the man's massive cock, and thinks briefly of how she should put Kazenov forward for a promotion for having such great ideas, when she sees it.

A barcode. On the back of his bald head.

Sam, who has finished massaging her right foot and is now drawing a long fingered, curious hand up Tamara's calf, yelps when in a panic Tamara swears in Spanish, stands up and scrambles over him as if burned. 

“God, I fucking _hate_ this city”, she says as she grabs her shoes and her bag, and without looking back, runs out of the club as fast as she can. She flags down the first black cab she sees, and throws a fistful of £20 notes at the man to break the speed limit, and doesn’t stop for breath until she’s safely and anonymously in the back row of a mostly empty plane taking off from Heathrow three hours later, having burned three credit cards and two emergency covers ensuring that she couldn’t possibly be tracked, cursing London and the ICA to hell. 

**Author's Note:**

> I, like Diana, really liked Tamara, even if she is a fascist. I think she is one of the best targets the game has had, probably because of her enormous amount of dialogue, and because she probably is canonically murdered by Yates, and deserved better (to get killed by 47).
> 
> So I wanted to write a mission story but from the point of view of someone who is a piece of the puzzle. 47 doesn’t know where the herald meeting is taking place. So the first mission is to discover that, which he does by first poisoning Tamara’s canapes (though she doesn't eat them because the mission story passed, once she learns what's in them), and then by poisoning her vodka (which she doesn’t realise, just thinks its her disgust at eating horse). Diana is the one who goes in and lifts the info from her handbag, probably after 47 has left safely. Second mission is a sniper map from across the way. It's a one-shot kill. Tamara and Kazenov are sitting nearby Cavanaugh, but are not the exception to his flawless record barring Diana and Mark Faba.
> 
> As usual, I have been reusing OCs, continuing to construct the cicak cinematic universe. Kazenov is the obnoxiously kinky asshole mentioned in [summer’s kiss to electric wire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29365275), and the girl he is boring the ear off is Sophie from [even steak don’t cry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083105) (who is also the new friend who tattles about the sex club to the duchess and blows 47’s mind). If Hitman can have background characters popping up again and again, so can I. This is obviously not in the same continuity as summer’s kiss, but I consider it the third part of a [series of stories](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186082) about the sex club that has yet to be named.
> 
> As usual, all the dresses are sourced from real life, because there’s nothing I like better than scrolling through the outnet deciding what to buy if I was both thin and had somewhere to go. Diana wears [this](https://www.theoutnet.com/en-gb/shop/product/marchesa-notte/dresses/gowns/ruffled-stretch-satin-gown/2204324139083388) Marchesa gown ) to the Nauryz party, and [this](https://www.theoutnet.com/en-gb/shop/product/herve-leger/dresses/gowns/bandage-gown/1890828705391697) sexy classic to the club. Tamara wears [this](https://www.theoutnet.com/en-gb/shop/product/badgley-mischka/dresses/gowns/one-shoulder-belted-ponte-gown/6630340699088197) to the Nauryz party, [this](https://www.theoutnet.com/en-gb/shop/product/diane-von-furstenberg/dresses/knee-length-dress/new-julian-two-printed-silk-jersey-wrap-dress/11452292645716726) to the Herald meeting, and finally [this](https://www.theoutnet.com/en-gb/shop/product/roland-mouret/dresses/midi-dress/one-shoulder-satin-peplum-dress/17476499600033930) to the club. Her shoes are [Valentino Rockstuds](https://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/cat/valentino-garavani-rockstud-100-leather-courts_783-10004-6108324109/?previewAttribute=NUDE), because at her heart she’s a basic bitch. Diana’s shoes are 120mm Christian Louboutin Pigalles in patent leather, and scholars of the cicak erotic ouvre will remember them as the ones 47 gave her in [‘in every life a little rain’](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23966176).
> 
> Finally, while I have yet to get an invite to a Kazakh embassy shindig, I can vouch for horse meat being incredibly delicious. Happy Nauryz, everyone!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [cicaklah.tumblr.com](http://cicaklah.tumblr.com) and you can read the rest of my hitman stories [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/works?fandom_id=4738971)


End file.
